Six Imperfections
by Nev Longbottom
Summary: Prompt: They might be heroes but they weren't perfect. They have their pasts; their secrets. They're all twisted in their own ways. But that's why they bonded so well.
1. Chapter 1

Kaldur killed his first eel when he was nine. It followed him home, nipping at his heels until Kaldur lost his temper and struck back. The eel's skull smashed into the rock. That hadn't been enough to kill it, but it was enough to make it writhe in an endless scream of pain.

Kaldur reached with both hands and pressed anywhere to break the bones enough to kill it. There was crack after crack until finally the eel stopped moving and Kaldur was left filtering the eel's blood through his filaments. It seemed really frustratingly messy.

He was sure there had to be a cleaner way.

He started swimming on the border of shark territories when he was nine. He wanted to see if there was a cleaner easier way. He knew that killing people was wrong, but there were no laws against defending yourself from attacks. It takes a dozen tiger sharks before he gets it right. Before he learns how to make it clean and quick, and most importantly efficient. That's when he stopped swimming near shark infested water.

As Kaldur aged, he grew ashamed of this childhood hobby he had developed. His work with his Queen and King made him more aware of the preciousness of life. He had a duty as an Atlantean to protect and defend. He enjoyed it. He was good at it even.

A part of him wondered if he's so good at being a Warrior because of his childhood hobby. His fighting is efficient. He won't waste water if he can help it, nor will he throw another blow when one hit will suffice. He doesn't have a taste for killing and he finds the thought of killing another person, villain or civilian, absolutely abhorrent.

Still he wondered if a human can be cut down with the same clean efficiency. Black Manta knew how to do it to an Atlantean. Kaldur found the murders to be vile, but a part of him wondered if it would be as effortless as sharks.


	2. Chapter 2

Superboy worries about his feet. When M'gann fuses about the kitchen making food, Superboy runs his finger over the creases on his toes and wonders how they stay so soft. He has soft back hair that grows between his toes and itches when his feet get sweaty. He wonders why he has to wear shoes if his feet are impenetrable.

He knows from Cadmus that most humans don't have hair between their toes. Maybe a couple strands on his toes or on the top of their feet, but not between them. Could that be why he's so scared of walking when the floor beneath him buckles.

Every step he takes has to be thought out, careful. When he places his foot on the earth, it moves away from him, like even the ground doesn't want to touch him. That's fine. Superboy doesn't want to touch it either but he hasn't learned to fly. He's a flawed copy and that. That makes him clench his teeth.

He had to learn how to walk again when they left the hard, compact dust of Cadmus where the others had compressed everything harder than steel. He had to learn how to let his weight fall instead of pushing against the ground. He didn't want to ask if it had something to do with the fur between his toes because the only person who would know was Superman and that- That was not going to happen.

Did Superman's parents have fur between their toes? He only know what Cadmus programed, but he knows Superman had Kryptonian parents. He knows that children sometimes look like their parents and sometimes they don't. KF says he has his mother's face but Artemis says she doesn't look like anyone. Just herself.

Is the fur between his toes from Superman's father? Is it from Superman's mother? Is his ultraviolet green and black coloration from one of them? He knows they are dead (and they aren't his parents, even if he likes to turn on No Signal and wonder what it would have been to grow up with them (and an older brother) in Krypton). He knows he's an imperfect clone, but he wonders if they'd think his feet were nice. He worries that maybe fur between your toes is an abnormal mutation. Maybe Superman doesn't have fur between his toes. No one Superboy knows has ever seen him without his shoes. Well, seen it and told Superboy. So.

He wonders.


	3. Chapter 3

Artemis wouldn't ever, ever admit to this. She'd shoot someone in a heartbeat if they tried to use to against her, but she loves dogs. Big ones, little ones, puppies best of all. She loves them fiercely, and she's not afraid to do what it takes even if it means cutting a bitch. Even if the bitch is Batman.

"Put it back."

Artemis holds the small puppy closer to her chest. "No," she says side-stepping away from the Gotham Municipality Animal Shelter. "No fucking way. He's going to be put down tomorrow." Tiny Herbie, a shaggy chihuahua puppy, could tiny in the palm of her hand. Severely undersize, malnourished, he had a bad case of ear mites, and he was blind but he never gave up.

Batman doesn't move. "We don't steal."

Artemis scowls. "I left the adoption fee." and then, as she feels the rage building up that Batman would try and make her put Tiny Herbie back, she bares her teeth.

"It's not fair. He's just a puppy. It's not his fault that his parents were street dogs. He deserves a chance to get big and strong and find a family. He shouldn't be killed for it," she yells, holding Herbie against her chest. He sneezes on her shoulder and tries not to think about how hard it is just to feed her mom and herself most days. How even if Herbie was a chihuahua, she'd have to get a second part time job just to keep an eye on him which would just make sleeping impossible, between Gotham and Star City and Young Justice.

"He'll be fine. I promise." Batman crosses his arms and waits.

Artemis thinks about her mom and gently places Herbie in Batman's arms. "I swear to god, anything happens to him- I'll shoot you. It's not his fault." She gives him the nastiest look she can muster before she heads home and paces for hours, until her mom makes her go to school and she finds out that all the animal shelters in Gotham were now being converted into no kill shelters as of today - thanks to a stipulated Foundation from the Wayne family.

Herbie is still there when she gets out of school. She can see him through the pane of glass. She's proud of bullying Batman for him. He deserves a chance.


	4. Chapter 4

Wally loves science. He does, oh man, did he go crazy over molecules. Chemistry changed his. Life. Man, he would never ever admit this, but he totally masturbated to Carl Sagan's audiobooks once. Okay, more like, he's lost count by now but that's not embarrassing.

No, science is beautiful. Embarrassing was-

It's the memories that Wally doesn't like to think about. He doesn't like to think about before he started his first Earth Science class. He doesn't like to think about being six years old with coke bottle glasses, curled up in a scoop chair in the library with his nose in a harry potter book.

His parents used to read him the stories at bedtime. When he asked if he could go to Hogwarts, they used to sneak looks at each other and say, "Maybe," like they k new a secret he did. Like they knew. Wally didn't care that the kids at school thought playing Wizard was a game. He didn't care back then that everyone called it fiction because when his parents looked at each other and said maybe, he knew they had a secret and in his heart he knew the secret HAD to be magic.

His Uncle Barry just appeared in rooms all the time with a crack noise. Sure he could move really fast, like a shifting blur, but sometimes he was just *CRACK* there. When you own flesh and blood was Apparating right in front of you and doing impossible things to fight crime... Well, then of course Uncle Barry would say it's science. He wouldn't want the entire family to get Obliviated, right?

So Wally waited. He waited and waited and he ignored all the other kids in school because he knew that in July, there would be a letter for him. Maybe it would be from Beauxbatons or Durmstrang, probably the Salem Witches Institute (Goblet of Fire, there was a sign by a tent with some Americans) but there was going to be a letter.

It didn't come. He cried himself to sleep for weeks when he figured it out. Magic wasn't real. It wasn't and it aches sometimes to think of how much it hurt to learn that.

Science, though, was real. It was real and wonderful because science could do things that magic never dreamed of, and Wally could use science any moment he wanted. So he did.


	5. Chapter 5

He waits until the end of his patrol to go into one of Scarecrow's labs. He found it in the middle of his patrol along Upper West Side Gotham. Batman was helping the league with a robot infestation in Eastern Manjaro. He wouldn't have had the nerve otherwise.

It wasn't actually in use. Robin could tell that by the dust on the tables, and trap linked to the door. A canister of Scarecrow's fear gas, ready to spray it's fumes in the face of any who walked in. He scouted the apartment level lab for two hours just to be absolutely sure it was abandoned.

It was.

Robin shoots off his grappling hook and swings himself right into the window, tucking himself under his cape to protect his face from glass. He lands on his feet and takes a moment to see if anyone if going to come up to the apartment to check. No one does.

Robin does one more check with his scanner before he's absolutely sure it's safe. He reaches up, goes up on his toes to reach up for the canister of fear gas and set off the trap.

He breathes in deep, trying to get as much gas in his system as he can manage. He knows it's working when he looks up and his parents as looking down at him.

"Disgusting little faggot freak," his father says. He says in English, then repeats himself in Romanian. He sneers down at Dick as his mother tells him what a disappointment he is in cant. How he is a worthless piece of trash who they should have killed at birth.

Dick breathes in again and they aren't in the apartment anymore. They are at the circus and all his family is there. Diego, Petrov, Ramona, Ilyana... Everyone surrounding him and looking at him in various shades of disgust and horror. They all take their turns telling Dick everything that's wrong with him, every reason he should kill himself or thank the person who kills them. His parents stay front and center for it all, glaring at them with their hate until the last of the fear gas dissipates and Dick is left curled up on the floor of a dusty apartment.

He wipes the tear tracks off his cheeks and looks for another canister for when he needs it. For when he starts to forget his parents voices and faces. He loves them too much to let go.


	6. Chapter 6

Megan is honest.

She's bright and sweet and thoughtful. She has crushes and she loves kittens and wonderful things. She likes musicals and baking and stuff that cheers people up. Megan is a Green Martian and she helps her uncle J'onzz and she loves being a part of Young Justice. Even if, you know, the violence is kind of uncomfortable but you can't just let people go around hurting each other!

M'gann M'orzz is a liar. She is one of the greatest liars the White Martians have ever seen. Lying, deceitful, and cruel in a way that impressed even the fiercest warriors of their kind. White Martians are famed for their blood lust and their adoration of war. Their lives are shaped by death and battle. M'gann's trickery made her famous. It made her stronger and greater but she had no bloodlust. War bored her. Though she is young, only 16 cycles of the sun, she finds death boring and she finds the reflection of herself in the eyes of Green Martians abhorrent. She is a monster on Mars. M'gann is tired of battle but she is not tired of lying.

On earth, when there are no Martians save one, she can lie to herself and that isn't boring at all. M'gann can awaken from slumber to look into a mirror and just-

-smack herself right in the forehead. "Hello Megan, you have to start breakfast in five minutes. Stop thinking about weird nightmares and wash your face." Seriously, these white Martian nightmares were totally creepy. Like, she'd totally know if she was a White Martian. Duh. It's nice to know her shapeshifting skills were improving to the point she could use them subconsciously but she just wished she'd stop shifting to white in her sleep.

She leaned over the sink and splashed cold water in her face until she felt awake again. When she leaned back up, she saw her green skin and swarma-grass colored freckles. Pretty cute, if she did say so herself. "That's better."


End file.
